A 1946 Camel Cigarette ad boasted a headline that read, “More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”

Today, an advertisement of that nature would merit censorship. Research of the negative health effects of smoking has led to the widespread acceptance of an assertion that the tobacco industry fought against for years—smoking is bad.

The health risks attached to smoking are well known. 87 percent of lung cancer deaths are the result of cigarette smoking, according to the National Cancer insitiute website.

Smoking causes at least 11 different types of cancer, including cancers of the bladder, stomach and voice box, according to the Center for Disease Control website. Smoking also causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.

These facts are indisputable.

And yet, smoking persists.

Approximately 43.4 million adults smoke regularly, according to the CDC website. More troubling, however, is the persistence of under-aged smoking.

According to the Family First Aid website, 1.4 million children under 18 begin smoking each year. According to the CDC website, 365,000 teens that start smoking this year will eventually die because of it.

This problem has not escaped the Rockhurst student body. While the number is difficult to calculate, students admit that it is a prevalent issue.

“I would guess 15 percent [of students] smoke often…[and] 85 percent have tried it. Kids smoke in their cars everyday when leaving [Rockhurst],” senior Keaton Dorman said.

And smoking is not limited to the senior class. Some smokers report that they started early in their high school career, or even before that.

“I had my first cigarette when I was in 8th grade. I really don’t know what made me start, but I genuinely wish I never did,” senior Joey Eyler, cigarette addict, said.

Teens today are more educated than ever about the dangers of smoking. But, according to smokers, past education is not always enough to stop them from smoking.

The stand-by reason for teenage decision-making, peer pressure, continues to hold true for smoking.

“I guess [I smoke because of] the peer pressure. If I’m around friends who are smoking [and] they offer me one, I just feel like I have to take it,” one senior said.

Another factor for some teens is the exposure to smoking as they grew up. According to the Family First Aid website, only 2 percent of smokers have parents who do not smoke. But even simply being around smokers can impact future decisions.

“I have close friends whose parents smoke and I think that may have factored into [my] decision [to smoke] because I always would see them smoking when I was growing up,” senior Tommy Randolph, a former smoker, said.

According to students, however, the most common reason that teens start smoking is their social environments. Many smokers describe themselves not as chain smokers or addicts, but instead as ‘social smokers,’ or ‘party smokers.’ This means that they do not smoke regularly or feel the need for a cigarette, but instead only smoke at parties or when hanging out with friends.

Teens see this as a safer way to smoke. This way, they can smoke and get the buzz from a cigarette, but not do it regularly enough to be adversely affected.

“I only smoke on the weekends, meaning only a couple cigs a weekend. So I guess I just tell myself, ‘its only one cig tonight, how much harm can that actually do?’ I don’t really think about the long-term consequences of smoking every weekend,” one senior said.

This social smoking is common, and is usually not a planned activity, like smoking might be for addicts.

“I only smoke as a social thing really. I really have never smoked a cigarette more than few times by myself. It’s more of an impulse thing at parties and other social situations,” Randolph, who now describes himself as a social smoker, said.

Often, smoking for teens is simply an issue of availability. Teens are presented with cigarettes; so they smoke.

“[Cigarettes] were there so I thought, ‘What the hell?’ and I tried [smoking], knowing how bad it was… I wasn’t pressured or anything, but the fact that they were so common made it easy to pick up and just think it was okay,” senior Matt Cox, a former cigarette addict.

The problem with this social smoking is that students do not see the effects, or they rationalize it by saying that other people might get addicted, but not them.

“If I smoke it’s only once every like two weeks, and it will only be like two [cigarettes]. I know its bad for me, but if I don’t do it a lot, I think I’ll be fine. And I have yet to get addicted,” one senior said.

However, social smoking still poses significant health risks. According to a Medical News today article, even those who only smoke a few cigarettes a week are at a much higher risk for smoking-related cancers than those who do not smoke at all. Also, young people have shown symptoms of nicotine dependency within only a few weeks of their initial smoking experience.

“There is growing evidence that even occasional smokers experience greater health risks when compared to non-smokers and are likely to progress to regular, dependent smoking over time,” Dr. Abigail Halperin, director and attending physician for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Smoke Free Life Program, said in the article.

The most significant problem that social smoking presents, however, is its tendency to be a stepping-stone to addiction for some teens. Cox started out only smoking at parties or when offered a cigarette by a friend, but he was soon smoking three packs a week.

“It was the summer before junior year, and I was hanging out with my neighbor [who was] going to be a senior… and his friends... That’s [when] I started. It slowly picked up and snowballed until I was addicted,” Cox said.

And once addicted, Cox admits it is not at all easy to quit.

“Quitting was one the hardest things I have ever done. It’s so much easier to just start again instead of quitting,” Cox said.

Eyler’s addiction has become even more serious. He admits that if he had the resources, he would smoke upwards of a pack a day.

“The problem is that the vast majority of times, [teens] don’t remain social smokers. They smoke a little bit more when they get older, and by the time they reach the age of about 25, they’re a regular smoker, and they’re hooked for decades,” Mr. Bill Blatt, director of American Lung Association tobacco programs, said.

“We do surveys and we know that something like 80 or 90 percent of smokers in high school say that they’ll quit by the time graduate from college, but we know that only about 10 percent of them actually are able to quit,” he said.

Though teens may think of social smoking as a safer alternative to regular or chain smoking, the addictive nature of the nicotine in cigarettes is too pervasive for most smokers to resist physically depending on it. And once a person is addicted and becomes a regular smoker, all those negative health statistics apply.

So no matter how it’s done, one thing stays true—smoking is bad.